PREFACE

When, two years ago, I prepared the second edition of my
Germany. A Companion to German Studies\ I wrote an account of
Nazi literature which turned out to be too bulky for inclusion in
the volume unless my sketch of Nazi history was cut down to
the barest outline; and the publishers agreed to my proposal that
I should expand the essay on German literature after 1880 in the
first edition to form a separate volume which should deal com-
prehensively and critically with the whole mass of the literature
concerned. This literature of more than eighty millions - for I
was bound to bring in the Swiss Germans as well as all the other
Amlandsdeutsche - is so vast that even in the generous space
allotted me by the publishers I have found it difficult to deal with
all I considered worthy of treatment. The difficulties have been
aggravated by the insistency of Nazi propaganda, which by its
very nature keeps in the limelight those writers ('die Kinder des
Drltten 'Ketches', 'die Dichter des heimlichen Deutschlands*} who before
1933 had the foresight to be volkhaft or the prudence to be so
after that date. Another difficulty was the suppression of bio-
graphical and bibliographical detail; e.g. such books of reference
as Wer isfs? are maddening in their planned and regulated
insufficiency. At all events, I have tried to do justice to all my
authors, whether boomed or banned; and, since on this side of
the water there could be no question of taking over Nazi valua-
tions, the verdict is in every case my own.

I am very grateful for authorizations to quote poems - they
include some of the very best of the period; and I must express
my thanks to firms and individuals - to the Insel-Verlag, Leipzig,
for Rilke; to Georg Bondi, Berlin, for Stefan George; to the
Albert Langen/Georg Miiller Verlag for Dauthendey; to the
Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart, for Liliencron; to the Otto

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